1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an image device, and particularly to a three-dimensional (3D)/two-dimensional (2D) multi-primary color image device which can display a 3D image, a 2D image and a mixed 2D/3D image, and a method for controlling the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
Display devices capable of displaying 3D images have been developed. 3D image display systems that have been studied so far can be classified into a type which uses glasses and a type which is glass free. Wearing glasses may have negative impact on users watching 3D contents. The more user friendly glass free 3D image display device includes an optical unit such as a parallax barrier, a lenticular lens or a second LCD which is used to direct two slightly different images, one to the left eye and one to the right eye for forming a 3D image.
Recently have active studies also been made to permit a 3D image display device to display a 2D image. The conventional approach is to make the aforementioned images for the left eye and for the right eye match with each other and display the same image. Referring to FIG. 1, it shows a conventional 3D display device. The conventional 3D display device 10 includes a plurality of RGB pixel groups 11 for the left eye and a plurality of RGB pixel groups 12 for the right eye. For example, the RGB pixel group 11 includes a red dot (R1) 111, a green dot (G1) 112 and a blue dot (B1) 113 for the left eye, and the RGB pixel group 12 includes a red dot (R2) 121, a green dot (G2) 122 and a blue dot (B2) 123 for the right eye. In this case, the same information should be displayed over two pixels, thus reducing the resolution to a half.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,705,844 teaches a method to arrange two RGB pixels in a square instead of 1 RGB stripe pixel so that double density can be obtain in the horizontal direction, thus compensating the loss of resolution by dividing a left image and a right image. The downside is that the gate line number increases by three, thus reducing dramatically the pixel clock and TFT LCD pixels do not have enough time to be fully charged, specially for amorphous LCD display.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,050,020 teaches a method to use 2 lenticular lenses to maintain the full resolution in 2D display mode in shifting one lenticular lens against another lenticular lens by half a lens pitch. The problem is still the complicated construction of the display with moving lenticular lenses, besides higher cost and easy wear and tear.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,466,954 teaches a display which alternately presents images from at least two video feeds and in which a synchronized, shuttered filter device is used that only permits the viewing of images from one of the video feeds. It is a time-sharing arrangement to allow multiple viewers to view different images on the same display. The downside is that the frame rate is reduced and so the visual quality of the display is degraded.